design-time-only references


I am implementing a component that helps a developer with some
localization tasks at design-time, and provides some related features
at run-time.

My problem is that in order to do the design-time stuff, I need a
reference to EnvDTE or EnvDTE80 (I'm using Whidbey beta 2). However, I
can't ship these .dlls and I don't need them at run-time anyway. If I
simply add a reference to envdte.dll in my project, then the
design-time stuff works, but I also have to ship envdte.dll at
run-time; otherwise my component will fail to load.

I tried using late binding. I broke the stuff that used envdte.dll into
its own .dll, had my component load it using Assembly.Load() inside a
test to see whether it was design-time or not. Then I used reflection
to invoke methods out of the .dll. This breaks the dependency, but it
has a problem: any objects returned by methods that I'm calling through
reflection are actually __COMObject stubs represented with
MarshalByRefObject, and I can't use reflection on them successfully.
For example, one of my methods in the design-time support .dll returns
an EnvDTE.Project. From within my component code I see this as an
object (since my component no longer has a reference to EnvDTE and thus
is late-bound). I know that the object type should have a property
called "UniqueName":

object proj = /*call design-time support dll and return a Project */;
//proj is *not* null here
PropertyInfo pi = proj.GetProperty("UniqueName");
//pi *is* null here, but if I put the same calls in the design-time
support dll instead of the component dll, it's not.

I assume that what's happening is that there's an AppDomain boundary
between my component and the EnvDTE stuff, and because the actual proj
variable is a proxy to the real object in the other AppDomain, I'm not
able to use reflection on it?

I wondered if I could just use /delayload on my component dll (that way
at run-time the design-time support .dll would never be loaded), but
that appears to only apply to C++ projects.

I'm stumped at this point. Any brilliant ideas would be appreciated.
:-)

--Daniel


--
danielhardmanPosted from http://www.pcreview.co.uk/ newsgroup access

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